The unsound approach

Whoever’s
writing the script for this autumn certainly seems to hate our guts. The old
“one week is never enough” adage rears its unwelcome head yet again, drumming
home the message that serious lifestyle changes are needed if we’re going to
avoid an annual dose of October frustration.

It had
all looked so promising. We’d boarded the Scillonian in high spirits after the
speedy Atlantic depression of the previous week, the one that had surely dropped
countless yank megas on the almost-birderless archipelago. The forecast for our week didn’t give us much hope for new yank arrivals, but we knew
there would be plenty ‘in the system’ after the previous storm, and the promise
of easterlies meant a good chance of an east-meets-west rarefest. Sure
enough, as soon as the boat yawed its way past the Runnelstone, the deck came
alive with the sound of rapid-fire mega alerts. Hermits to the north, Siberian
buntings to the west and a convenient Mediterranean beauty literally waiting
for us on the St Mary’s quay. Yanks were turning up left and right, and for a
while we stopped scanning the waves for grey phals and started optimistically
searching the clouds for a drop-in Catharus.

Predictably,
once we were installed on the island things started to unravel pretty quickly.
After about the third day of scouring bracken and elm on St Martin’s for little
reward, our pool of optimism evaporated into a tepid puddle of lingering
disappointment. Another year, another failure.Crippling yanks continued to be found on islands either side of us, but
we had the inescapable feeling that we’d exhausted all possible hide-outs for
lurking passerines on our chosen rock. The closest we came to yankage was a
wind-drifted “bwink” call coming from an unseen culprit high above the school
on 10th, though sadly nothing materialised in the bracken.

The best
bird of the week, a beautiful Tawny Pipit on Lower Town beach, was another
source of pain in the self-found stakes. It was first heard by JG on 9th calling distantly somewhere over the beach, but after tramping through the
marrams to no avail he wrote it off as a figment of his imagination. Next
morning, JG and RA both heard it more clearly, this time heading north over
Lower Town. Both were more confident of the ID this time, but didn’t want to
claim anything without actually seeing the bird. Given it’s heading, they figured
a search of the barren headlands would be in order, but only after the trees
had been thoroughly worked for yanks. Sadly the beast had other ideas, slipping
back to the beach and giving itself away whorishly to a bunch of day-twitchers.
Cracking bird, but the chance of a quality self-found went begging.

Second
best was a Melodious Warbler found by JG near the school on 10th,
which also caused more than its fair share of confusion/misery. Initially seen
briefly at long range, it looked good for Melodious but views weren’t good
enough to be 100% certain, especially as it showed quite a strong wing panel. The bird then went to ground and stayed
there for the next three days, occasionally poking bits of itself out of the
brambles but never showing properly. It was eventually seen well by some
visiting birders who ID’ed it as an Icterine and broadcast the news. Next day,
after much perseverance RA managed to corner it and secure some quality pics,
confirming that it was a Melodious after all. Towards the end of the
week, DWS found what was almost certainly the same bird in the elms at
Sevenstones Pub.

Beyond
those meagre pickings, our scarce haul was fairly average – RA found an RBF, GD
found a Dartford and everyone apart from JG found Wrynecks. A Grotfinch found by RA and GD at the school on 13th
was apparently different to the bird found by day-visitors at the other end of
the isle on 12th. The common
migrant showing was surprisingly good, particularly Pied and Spotted Flycatchers with up to 25 of each over
the first few days, though the Yellow-brow total stood at a lowly four. Bizarrely,
we were also treated to another comedy Pec suffering from Martins madness...
How come they seem to love puddles and tripod legs so much on this island?

As for
the general demise of Scilly, it seems the trend is continuing unabated. The
weather system that hit the islands before our arrival was an absolute corker, delivering
top-notch yanks to pretty much every likely spot from Brittany to the Western
Isles, with one obvious exception... Admittedly, a REV was eventually found on
Agnes, presumably having lurked unseen in one of the inaccessible parts of the
island before eventually finding its way to the Parsonage. We can only wonder
what else was present on the isles while the Chestnut-sides, Yellow-rumps and
Catharuses were turning up elsewhere. The fact is, modern-day Scilly receives
barely a fraction of the coverage it needs. The isles are absolutely covered in
greenery (probably more now than in the 80’s?), much of which is difficult to
access. More to the point, only a tiny proportion of the 200 or so birders that
visit the islands these days will put in the hours needed to eek out Dendroicas
on St Marys. For even a reasonable proportion of stuff to get found, islands
like the Scillies need keen bird finders to be out in force, making
co-ordinated efforts to search exhaustively. That just doesn’t happen these
days.

Of
course, that should make it a boon for would-be rarity finders – the rares are
all still there, just waiting to be found. The trouble is, even if you’ve got the
place to yourself, bird finding on Scilly is still ridiculously hard. It’s a whole
different game compared to Shetland. If you walk within 50 feet of a Hermit Thrush
on Sumburgh Head, there’s a good chance it’ll flush and you’ll see it. Do the
same on St Martin’s, chances are it’ll stay in the bottom of the hedge, totally
invisible. If it does flush, it only needs to fly about five feet before it
finds impenetrable cover. Now, if thirty keen birders were to walk past that
spot during the day, there’d be a reasonable chance one of them would find it. If
only ten walk past, maybe not. Especially if eight of those ten are concentrating
entirely on chatting / listening to Radio Filby / getting to Daymark to twitch
the Snow Bunting.

Scilly
obviously has enormous potential for self-found rares these days, but it’s
incredibly hard work and can be massively debilitating. You can see why everyone
is opting for easy street and heading to Shetland. Judging by how Fair Isle and
Foula did, it was probably a pretty crap season overall for the Northern Isles,
the big mainland haul simply being a product of increased observer coverage. If
you want an October holiday with guaranteed self-found results, that’s the
place to go. Still, a quick glance at the pics from Sein and you realise
realise how amazing the south west might still be, with the right slice of luck...